The Education Debate Essay Example for Free

The Education Debate Essay 1. Nielsens (Booms) opinion of a higher education is a very interesting and intellectual opinion that I myself also share. In this text Blooms creates a very strong distinguishment between the education you receive from universities in the sense of book smarts whether then the skills universities lack to teach, which in Blooms opinion is wisdom, and virtue. Bloom suggests these skills are essential in order to follow the path to the good life. In this text Bloom subtitles How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of todays students,, which in essence is a direct attack at univerisites for not instilling the proper morals and lessons in their students. The skills that the students lack have been extremely noticeable to Bloom, he suggests due to the lack of nobility and morality students no longer fall in love, students deem only for sexual relationships rather than companionship and love. Bloom draws a strong discrepancy between the arts and sciences. He states that non-science undergrads are not required to take any science courses while science inflicted students are required to take 3 of their 20 courses in either science or arts. This allowance for the choice between arts science is something I agree extremely on. Both these areas of education offer such similar however also different skills. Arts, allow for creativity, wonder, insight and inference while science grabs connection to nature, realism and direct intellect. I believe both areas are important for the development of a human, it offers a type of well roundedness and intellectual ability in all aspects of life. Currently our education follows a systematic approach of a one answer, one right type of approach. This limits the ability of creativity, inference and uniqueness. Memorization is absolutely one of the worst skills that school has to offer, instead understanding and conceptualizing is key to the success of education. Educations meaning has been blown out of proportion, while grades do matter extremely the valuableness of other aspects of life have been loss. Everyone knows that one person whoms life revolves around their academic achievements, its all they talk about, its all they do and all they will ever know. While this is not entirely bad it has a large negative effect due to its ability to block humans from the real world. Whole heartedly I agree with Blooms opinion of education, for me its a sense of wonder of the world and taking time and understanding what really occurs in our lives. At times I sit and focus on certain systems in our world, whether it be education, government or the structure of authority I find myself to have a very different opinion then others most of the time. I believe that education needs to be re-evaluated to accommodate the needs of the students of today and the future. However, for now a systematic approach to education in order to reach my goal of intellect is what I will follow. 2. Both the sciences and arts offer a wide variety of benefits. The arts allow for a type of personal and creative development as a person. The different benefits these areas of education have to offer compliment one another ever so dearly. Science allows for the respect and love for freedom, it gives raise to the interest of the universe, and most importantly direct intelligence of our existence and meaning is challenged. I believe Nielsen Bloom argues the need for both science and art due to the combination of skills it can inflict. As stated above I listed some of the skills that can be achieved through each area, with combination these skills can use each other and feed off one another in order to create the maximum benefit. You have the ability to connect to science nature while using your scientific knowledge to relate to arts and other matter. I suspect this balance that these two areas offer is why Nielsen argues them so deeply. 3. Nielsen Bloom uses the three sub-headings, Futile Propaganda, Delusive Openness, and Ignorant Shepherds. Each of these heading relate to the piece of upcoming text in a very disclosed way. A type of intellectual philosophy is used within these headings in order to bring awareness to the argument that is going to be made. The first heading, Futile Propaganda suggests that students are often under prepared for a type of higher education then they receive during their prior years. In our society students have so many more oppurtunities to loose their attention from skills such as reading and homework, but who would want to engage in reading while they are able to watch their favorite television shows during the afternoon. The next heading, Delusive Openness, states that students believe There are no universal and eternal varieties for people to learn and live by, this leaves everyone to think and do as they please. This suggests that the openness we have today leads to ultimately closed mindedness because students lack curiosity.